In honor of today being Opening Day for the Chicago Cubs, I thought I would post a picture of a night game at Wrigley.

As many of you know, Wrigley Field was one of the last baseball fields to install lights and host night games. Lights were not officially installing until 1988 after baseball officials refused to allow Wrigley to host any post-season games without lights. Even now with the lights, night games are limited in number by agreement with the city council. This wasn’t because P.K. Wrigley didn’t want to install lights, in contrary, in 1942 he had planned to install lights, but instead, the lights and stands were scrapped for the war effort.

July 1, 1943, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League’s first All-Star Game was played under temporary lights at Wrigley Field, and was the first night game ever played in the historic ballpark. Since those were only temporary lights, another night game would not be played until August 8, 1988, against the Philadelphia Phillies. However, the game was rained out after 3½ innings and thus the first official night game at Wrigley was held the following day, August 9.